Day: October 8, 2012

WASHINGTON — President Obama’s campaign is working feverishly to restore its momentum after a lackluster debate performance last week, an effort that began with a conference call 10 minutes before the debate even ended and led to new advertisements, a rewritten stump speech, a carefully timed leak and a reversal of months-old strategy.

Perhaps most important as the president’s team struggles to put his campaign back on track is a renewed effort to win the three remaining debates, starting with Thursday’s face-off between Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Representative Paul D. Ryan. Mr. Biden began traveling to a Delaware hotel on Sunday for three days of debate camp.

Under the tutelage of David Axelrod, the president’s chief strategist who is personally overseeing the preparations, Mr. Biden will be counseled on how to avoid Mr. Obama’s mistakes and even correct them with a more aggressive prosecution of the Republican ticket. Mr. Axelrod’s involvement highlights the stakes the Obama campaign places on the debate, and Mr. Biden has been reading “Young Guns,” the book co-written by Mr. Ryan, and practicing attack lines that Mr. Obama avoided.

[….]

In rehearsals, Representative Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat who is playing Mr. Ryan, has mimicked what he considered the Republican’s staccato speaking style and penchant for slashing arguments wrapped in a smile. “I expect the vice president to come at me like a cannonball,” Mr. Ryan told The Weekly Standard.

Mr. Biden’s advisers view Mr. Ryan as a walking encyclopedia of numbers and policy and hope he might get lost in the weeds. “The key is to be able to cut through the numbers that often don’t make sense,” said Mr. Van Hollen. Also crucial is helping Mr. Biden tame his own loquacious nature and proclivity for gaffes.

*snicker*

Look, I’m not making any predictions about how the Thursday night debate will go – but I just think it’s hilarious that the Obama campaign is riding high hopes on gaffe-tastic Joe riding to the rescue, when he has been responsible for so many goofs that the campaign and the administration have had to either dodge, explain their way out of, or spin.

What I do anticipate for Thursday night is a debate at least on the level of the Palin/Biden debate, spirited, with a few zingers, and maybe both candidates looking a touch flustered a time or two – with the end result being a draw or one having a slight edge (I REALLY hope Ryan crushes Biden, but I’m not going to get overly confident). But I do NOT expect this debate to suddenly reverse the progress made by Romney’s performance in the first Presidential debate.

Lt. Col. Andy Wood, the former head of a Special Forces “Site Security Team,” said in a pair of interviews that the embassy staff, including slain Amb. Chris Stevens, had wanted his group of 16 special operations soldiers to stay in Libya.

“[The] first choice was for us to stay,” Wood told ABC News. “That would have been the choice of the embassy people in Tripoli.”

Wood told CBS News that when he found out his team was being removed in August, he felt, “like we were being asked to play the piano with two fingers. There was concern amongst the entire embassy staff.”

“We felt we needed more, not less,” Wood added.

The former security officer said embassy staffers approached him to express concerns about their safety, but said the State Department instructed diplomatic workers “to do with less.”

(Emphasis added)

I can understand that. After all, the security situation in Libya couldn’t be any more volatile than, say, Ottawa or Tokyo, right?

And you have to love State’s “response:”

“The SST was enlisted to support the re-opening of Embassy Tripoli, to help ensure we had the security necessary as our diplomatic presence grew. They were based in Tripoli and operated almost exclusively there. When their rotation in Libya ended, Diplomatic Security Special Agents were deployed and maintained a constant level of security capability. So their departure had no impact whatsoever on the total number of fully trained American security personnel in Libya generally, or in Benghazi specifically,” said the State Department in the statement.

The withdrawal of Special Forces had “no impact whatsoever?” As in “made no difference?” Really?

No impact.

State’s statement also says that LTC Wood was only stationed in Tripoli, implying that his team’s continued presence would have made no difference in Benghazi. Right. They’re trying to tell us that a Lieutenant Colonel in the Special Forces, if tasked to assess security in another city couldn’t quickly figure out the risks and needs? It just begs the question, why wasn’t Wood told to assess Benghazi, where there was an American consulate in a known al Qaeda recruiting ground?

And let’s not forget: Benghazi was not just a human disaster, but also an intelligence train wreck, too, as important documents and secrets were left unsecured. (And who knows how many lives will be lost as al Qaeda learns who was helping us?) Issa’s House Oversight Committee will be holding hearings on Benghazi this week. Given the number of whistle-blowers apparently eager to talk and high-ranking political appointees desperate to blame anyone but themselves, it should be an interesting day.

PRINCETON, NJ — Registered voters’ preferences for president are evenly split in the first three days of Gallup tracking since last Wednesday’s presidential debate. In the three days prior to the debate, Barack Obama had a five-percentage-point edge among registered voters.

[…]

Gallup typically reports voter presidential preferences in seven-day rolling averages; the latest such average as of Saturday interviewing shows Obama with an average three-point edge, 49% to 46%, among registered voters. This Sept. 30-Oct. 6 field period includes three days before the Oct. 3 debate, the night of the debate itself, and three days after the debate.

According to the chart at the Gallup link, Obama had a 50%-45% edge going into the debate. Post-debate shows them both tied at 47% (irony!).

Romney Posts Historic Win in Debate

An Oct. 4-5 Gallup poll finds roughly two in three Americans reporting that they watched the Oct. 3 debate, similar to what Gallup measured for each of the three 2008 presidential debates. Those who viewed the debate overwhelmingly believe Romney did a better job than Obama, 72% to 20%. Republicans were nearly unanimous in judging Romney the winner. But even Democrats rated Romney as doing a better job than Obama, 49% to 39%.

Wow. You know it’s bad for our celebrity President when even Democrats think he tanked.

As I and others have mentioned, however, we can’t get overconfident. What we do know now is that Mitt Romney will not allow Obama to distort the record – both Romney’s and Obama’s own. And he’s not shy about showering the President and debate viewers with stats and facts – peppered with passion for the Presidency, none of which Obama has. I noted over the weekend that Romney needs to hammer home from now until election day the line he uttered at the first debate, which was, “but you’ve been President for four years.” It’s imperative that Romney not only shine a light on what Obama HAS done that has been disastrous for this country but what he has NOT done that has also been disastrous.

Be cautiously optimistic and happy over this polling news, my dear readers, but keep fighting.